Snowstorms call for Deathmatches

For anyone who may not know because they don't live in New England, or plain don't care, we just had a storm run through and flip all of our tables.  The media has a tendency to take every weather warning and blow it out of proportion for our area, which makes it extremely difficult to discern what will actually be dangerous and what they are trying to terrify us into watching them talk about.  And on occasion, even they're surprised, which doesn't lend them much credibility. 

I have an example!  This was a 'slight flood chance' in my last apartment.  Notice the amazing driving skills of Massachusetts citizens.  That 'minor' flood turned out to be one of the worst we ever had, and destroyed most of the bridges in the area and ended up isolating entire city blocks because the road had become a river.  

Look at that car in the background, you know he was going to try to cross until he saw that car-turned-fishing bobber.  What you can't see is my husband and I laughing and sipping our coffee from our perch on the trunk of my car or the ducks that were swimming in the parking lot to the left. 

Well, this time, the bastards were sadly right.  Bastards. 

As prepared as ever, I was working on my new novel and of course, the power went out juuuust long enough that my computer fainted.  We live in the backwater end of nowhere, so it's sort of normal for the power to just take a quick break and come back.  Not wanting to deal with that bullshit all night, I powered up the pc, and figured, "Okay.  I'll print it and read it on the couch."  My new printer is weird, it prints from the last page backwards to the first.  So, when the power went out after four pages, it left me with part of one scene that I didn't need to be reminded of, because I had just written it. 

I glared at my husband, at the printer and then the monitor and in the words of some of my first role models, I told all three that this meant war.  My next attempt got me half of one more page, then the attempt after that my printer ran out of paper and after I reloaded it, I got less than ever.  This carried on until I admit defeat and went upstairs with many copies of one scene that I had already read. 

And the power stayed on.  Are you laughing, because my eye was twitching haha.  For an hour, no breaks in power.  So, I snuck downstairs, went to print it again, and out it went.   For good.  My husband blames me for my war with the electricity, because I had clearly offended it by assuming a truce would be had, and it had undermined me and hurt his programming in the process. 

Having no power means having no heat, but if you have well water instead of city water, then the electric pump is useless and you don't have that necessary water either.  That left the woodburning stove and the grill as our only functioning utilities, which had been more than enough when we had lost power for five days in the summer.  Not the same in a blizzard. 

The house only dropped to 45 degrees on the first night, but I was very eager to accept the invite from my brother and crash the hell out of his place, because he not only had power; he had internet.  And a kuerig, so I wouldn't even need to bring mine or murder anyone. Good thing I left, when we did end up coming back to check the house had gone down to 38...

Despite other driver's best efforts we arrived at my brother's safely.  Yes, thank you to man in the SUV with rear wheel drive for demonstrating how to spin wildly out of control at 10 mph.  You would think people that live in Massachusetts would know how to deal with snow and you would be absolutely wrong.  They see it fall and look at it as if they've never seen it before, screaming, "White demon powder is falling from the sky!!!  I am amazed by its beauty so much that I wish to celebrate by crashing my vehicle into the nearest object!"

Trip and new surroundings aside, I enjoyed my work break more than I thought I would.  I spent a night with searing hot coffee and every multiplayer steam game that I had shooting zombies/mutants/dragons/ghosts and/or my brothers in the face.  Some of my best ideas come to me when I'm not looking for them, I think that's common for everyone.  Tarro's speech in The Cat & the Crow about how amusing it is to have a problem and stumble on the solution purely by chance was something I had said the afternoon of the same day that I wrote it because it's true to life.  When you give up, inspiration hits. 

Not allowed to smoke in my brother's apartment, I eventually caved and went outside in an outfit that had me looking like a secondhand runway model, knee deep in snow, and when I looked around I had a chill.  Not from the cold, mind you, from a story idea being created and finalized in an instant.   I started writing it as soon as I had the opportunity, and in two evenings of working it's already at 15k words on the draft.  I even used the life out of my new keyboard, but it's cool; I had a spare.  It may be done before my new novel, because it has my interest and gratitude for popping into my head.  And the more I work on it, the better the ideas are that are coming to me.  

It just goes to show that senselessly murdering hordes of imaginary friends can solve almost any problem. (claim subject to reality) 

Passion returned, writers block murdered - my thanks for the crippling storm!

Also, I found my music for my homoerotic werewolf story.  Stories now, actually. 

I win!

Also, SMD 1 & 2 are going to be republished in the upcoming weeks as free e-books.  So, yay for that!

Much love to everyone and my wishes for the very best Valentine's Day that you can have. The storm tried to kill me and my family and we came back just fine, thought I'd let my friends who read this nonsense know what's up. 

S. K. <3

Now, back to Sadko...